Alpine Racer

1995 · Sports · Arcade

About Alpine Racer

Alpine Racer (1995) is Namco's System 22 skiing arcade game, played by standing on swivelling foot pedals and gripping handlebars, a major hit in Japan and the US that set off a wave of arcade sports games.

Alpine Racer in Depth

Based on alpine skiing, it uses a handlebar controller with rotating foot pedals to simulate real skis. The player steers a skier down a snowy mountain course, avoiding trees and rocks and staying on the slope. Three courses grow harder with fast-moving obstacles and sharper turns, across Novice, Intermediate and Expert difficulty. In Race Mode, the skier takes on five computer opponents, and finishing first earns a replay; in Time Trial Mode, the skier goes solo against a countdown, restoring a second for each large gate passed. On one course, Pac-Man appears on a billboard wearing a Santa hat.

Critics praised the controls as unlike any other game: Next Generation gave it a perfect score, saying they gave a true sense of skiing and suggesting its premise could attract players of both genders, and GameFan called the graphics "nothing short of shocking". Spanish magazine Ultima Generacion found it far more original than Sega Rally and credited it with challenging the view that arcades held mostly violent games. Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani said games like it drew players into the "heart" of arcades with distinctive controls, and historian Steve Kent cited it as an experience that could never be recreated at home.

Making Alpine Racer

Namco developed it for its System 22 hardware and gave it a limited release in December 1994 before a wide release in July 1995. Game Machine listed it as Japan's most popular dedicated arcade game in its 15 August 1995 issue, and in March 1996 Leisure Line reported it as the most successful arcade game in Japan, second in Australia behind Manx TT Super Bike and in the top three in the US. It was Japan's fourth highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1996 and among the top five in the US, and it was nominated for Most Innovative New Technology at the 1996 AMOA Awards. Its success led Sega, Namco, Konami and Innovative Concepts to release a wave of similar sports games in the late 1990s. Sequels followed: Alpine Racer 2 in 1996 with three skiers and linked multiplayer, the snowboarding spin-off Alpine Surfer the same year, Alpine Racer 3 in 2002, mobile versions, an iOS remake in 2009 and Super Alpine Racer in 2014.

Alpine Racer Trivia

Each cabinet cost $20,000, and an estimated 2,000 were sold in the US.
In March 1996 it was Japan's most successful arcade game, ahead of Tekken 2 and Virtua Cop 2.
It won Best New Equipment at the 1995 AMOA exposition.
Harvard sleep scientist Robert Stickgold found that people who played it before sleeping, including amnesiacs, dreamed of skiing.
Alpine Racer 3 on the PlayStation 2 added Klonoa as a guest skier.